"why are you so certain you are so much better than others because you base your entire life on logic and reason?"
The notion of one person being better than another is meaningless to me. I don't think I'm better than anyone. I don't think anyone is better than anyone.
"Better" only makes sense to me in relation to goals. Which is a better car: a minivan or a Porshe? Well it depends if you need to get 1 person someplace in a hurry or 6 people someplace by noon.
When I say that acting rationally is better than acting irrationally, I mean that it is more likely to result in health, happiness, achievement of goals, or any other measure of commonly accepted positive aspects of life. I also think that an individual who behaves rationally is better for his community than one who acts irrationally, with the same positive results being the measure.
(I know that something like "happiness" or "positive aspect of life" are a fuzzy concepts that are difficult to measure. That doesn't make my contention wrong or unprovable, it just makes it more difficult to prove.)
I want to note that believing non-truth can in some ways appear to be advantageous to your health, happiness, and achievement of goals. This is why I also throw in that honesty is important.
As an example here's a scenario.
Assumptions:
- You wake up in prison, with no memory of what happened for the last week. You are told that you committed a crime and have been sentenced to life in prison. There is no appeal.
- You strongly believe that someone who committed the crime you are charged with deserves life in prison.
- The truth is that you had done nothing wrong, but you don't know it.
- Someone your age in good health can expect to live 50 more years.
- If you try to escape from prison, you have a 90% chance of being killed in the escape and a 10% chance of escaping and going on to live a normal life outside.
In some ways, it would be better if you believed the lie. You wouldn't wrestle with your lack of memory and wonder if it really happened. You'd never consider escape, so you'd live 50 more years in prison. You'd accept your misdeed and you might be able to achieve happiness knowing that you are fairly paying the price of your crime. You could enjoy reading books and lifting weights and make the best of the situation. Dishonesty has some appeal here.
But I'd sure want to know that I was innocent. Then I could make a choice about escaping. I'd have to decide if a high risk of death is worth my freedom, and I'd probably conclude that it is. I value honesty.
8 comments:
thanks and nice post. i think i more clearly understand some of the things you were talking about.
im curious about the question you posed at the end of your post. i feel like i would want to know if i did it or not like you would.
but i am not sure if that changes my decision to try to escape. are you saying you would gladly remain in jail if you convinced yourself you did it (believed the lie)? i feel like even if i believed the lie that i did it, i would still consider escape and have the same decision to make about the risk of death compared to the value of freedom. who goes to prison and doesnt think about escaping?
likewise even if i knew i didnt do it, depending on the risks, i might still be forced to accept it and lift weights, and make the most of it...
"When I say that acting rationally is better than acting irrationally, I mean that it is more likely to result in health, happiness, achievement of goals, or any other measure of commonly accepted positive aspects of life. I also think that an individual who behaves rationally is better for his community than one who acts irrationally, with the same positive results being the measure."
my main concern with this approach/proposal/solution/outlook is that it is based on the assumption that the average person has the capabilities to act rationally (independant of religion). i think this is possibly asking too much for your average person. i think the same problems for which you blame religion would occur even without religion, just in another form.
furhter, i know and have seen plenty of irrational people, and there are plenty of cases where it is not caused by faith based religion.
its hard to dispute that if everyone acted reasonably and logically that it would be better for everyone. so it follows that i could see where you are hating on "blind faith" as a distraction preventing someone from acting this way.
i guess i dont have the conflict that others might with a religious person acting rationally and being better, with positive results being the measure. i dont make the conclusion that anyone who is religious is less likely to result in health, happiness, etc.
i am not even sure its fair to cite some historical events as proof of religion causing irrational behaivor. if you want to go scientific, there is little to no confidence in being sure that was the cause. say there was some crusade, and people died. there is no way for anyone to know what motivated and caused each specific person to do what they did. i think it is not completely accurate to assume they were all super blinded by faith and lacked rational thinking because of ONLY religion.
i dont know, these are just some random thoughts and reactions to your party night of all night posting.
One of the assumptions was:
You strongly believe that someone who committed the crime you are charged with deserves life in prison.
I assume this means that you wouldn't try to break out, since it would be wrong to avoid your punishment.
"my main concern with this approach/proposal/solution/outlook is that it is based on the assumption that the average person has the capabilities to act rationally (independant of religion). i think this is possibly asking too much for your average person."
now there's some arrogance for you.
so apparently the average person can have god crammed into them making them act nicely, but can't act nicely on the own accord...so that's one more vote that believing in god is stupid (or at least that stupid people can only believe in god and not rational thinking)
oh snap!
cara lays it down hard
i never said they need religion to act nicely. i said a world based only on reason and logic is not realistic, in my opinion, based on my experience as a human in the world we live in.
i said "i think the same problems for which you blame religion would occur even without religion".
I also dont find the statement i made arrogant. in no way was i implying that i am better than anyone. perhaps i said that because i myself am unable to act nicely without religion, in which case it could be viewed as quite modest. perhaps I was not giving people as a group enough credit, but dont mistake that for arrogance.
in any case if you were offended by my statement sounding arrogant i appologize as it was not my intention. although it actually sounds like that accusation is a weak cheap shot because i told sparks he sounded arrogant. i was just giving him feedback as a reader, it wasnt a personal attack. after all, its his blog.
What about the matrix as your example instead of prison? In your prison example, you have to want to stay in prison if you think you are guilty, because not being in prison (being an atheist) is actually better in this case. With the matrix it's reversed, by wanting to seek out the truth, you have to be willing to live with shitty consequences.
I knew my analogy sounded familiar. Thanks for spotting it.
I like the prison/matrix framework because you can change the assumptions to make various points. If you think that life without God is worse than life with God, then life in prison/matrix is better.
In the case at hand I'm not doing the aetheist thing yet, I was just illustrating how dishonesty can be valuable, which The Matrix is the perfect example. Well done, Mox.
Post a Comment